Dolly Parton working 9 to 5 on Nashville hotel project 

Dolly Parton is getting in tune with her office-to-hotel conversion in downtown Nashville.

The Dollywood Company, a joint venture between the country music legend and Atlanta-based Herschend Enterprises, secured a permit to start demolition work on the office building at 211 Commerce, the Nashville Business Journal reported. 

The venture bought the 233,300-square-foot building for $75 million, or about $321 per square foot, late last year. The seller, a venture of Dallas-based Lincoln Property Company and Velocis, bought it for $50 million in 2021. 

“Since the pandemic, commercial real estate is becoming an opportunity. I strongly believe in the future of Nashville and feel this is a great investment,” Parton said at the time of purchase. 

The ground floor, which includes several restaurants and retail space, will remain intact. Part of the sixth and seventh floors, which house the building’s two remaining office tenants, will also be excluded from the interior demolition project, set to cost $500,000.

Cincinnati-based Pivot Studio will serve as the architect, while D&S Builders handles demolition, the outlet reported. 

Parton’s foray into Nashville’s real estate scene follows her successful development of the Dollywood entertainment district in eastern Tennessee’s Pigeon Forge nearly four decades ago. Dollywood features a water park, theme park and two resorts, the second of which opened in November.

Several high-profile figures have made a splash in Nashville’s lodging industry since last year, signaling a bounce back after the pandemic hindered leisure travel and overall foot traffic, which caused hotel revenues to plummet across much of the nation. 

Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates paid $82.6 million for the 168-room Dream Hotel in downtown last summer. Earlier this month, Host Hotels & Resorts struck a deal to buy  the 1 Hotel Nashville and the adjacent Embassy Suites for $500 million, marking the most expensive hotel sale in Nashville since 2022. 

—Quinn Donoghue 

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